By: Paul White
A three-book memoir documenting a woman’s travel-inspired self-discovery and sense of belonging.
A Life in Motion, A Heart in Search
Born in Belarus, Alena Zhdanava is an educator, traveler, writer, and lifelong learner whose life unfolds across continents, each destination shaping a new version of herself. From the snowy streets of Eastern Europe to the vibrant rhythms of Southeast Asia and the vast horizons of the Americas, her life is a living map of transformation.
Her trilogy of memoirs, Finding Myself Elsewhere, When Heart Finds Home, and Roam and Return, weaves together the physical adventures of a woman traveling the world with the quieter emotional and spiritual evolution that accompanies them. These are not simple travel stories but reflections on courage, resilience, heartbreak, and the evolving meaning of home.
Through the lens of movement, the reader witnesses her transformation from curiosity to courage, from restlessness to belonging. Across continents and experiences, Alena’s journey becomes an intimate meditation on freedom, love, and the search for a place and a self that feels like home.
Book 1: Finding Myself Elsewhere
It’s all about the awakening, stepping beyond borders for the first time, and realizing that the real discovery is of oneself.
Alena grew up in Belarus and Poland, following traditional values: study hard, get a stable job, build a predictable life. Yet somewhere deep inside, a spark of curiosity begins to grow, a question about what lies beyond the familiar.
Her first trips abroad became a revelation. Every trip pulls her further from expectation and closer to authenticity. Living independently in the United States is the point: that moment of clarity when she realizes she can never return to the ordinary path laid out for her.
The years that follow unfold like a tapestry of challenges and discovery. She works in Angola, studies in Greece and South Korea, teaches in China and Thailand, and completes an internship in Australia. Every experience tests her endurance, adaptability, and faith.
Yet travel is not only a source of beauty; it also brings betrayal, danger, and heartbreak. Moments of loneliness and uncertainty force her to look inward and find reserves of strength she never knew existed.
By the end of Finding Myself Elsewhere, Alena returns to Malaysia, uncertain but hopeful. Having tested her, the road has also shaped her. She stands on the edge of a new beginning, not guided by a plan but by instinct, and the quiet trust that she is where she’s meant to be.
Book Two: When Heart Finds Home
Learning to stand still, finding peace, love, and spiritual grounding while living and teaching in Malaysia is the core of this book.
At the very beginning of her time in Malaysia, before she could even process the unexpected challenges ahead, Alena completed a Vipassana meditation. Ten days of silence give her the clarity and steadiness she needs to face what happens next.
When Heart Finds Home opens with a plan gone awry. Alena arrives in Malaysia expecting to begin a PhD program, only to find her academic path abruptly closed. Yet rather than give in to disappointment, she adapts, a skill travel has long taught her.
A teaching job at a language center in Kuala Lumpur brings her back to more purposeful work through her students, finding that teaching is far more than just an occupation; it’s a connection, a way to leave her imprint on the world while she remains open.
While living and working in Malaysia, Alena makes a deliberate decision: to use every opportunity to explore the region while she is there. And so, at every possible chance, she travels: Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, and even New Zealand.
These journeys, all taken during her year in Kuala Lumpur, become a mosaic of discovery. Each place brings its own lessons in stillness, wonder, and gratitude. She learns that movement and stillness are not opposites but complementary forces in a well-lived life.
Alongside teaching and traveling, Alena reconnects with creativity. Painting, yoga, journaling, and the community she builds around herself help her nourish parts of her identity that often go quiet during periods of constant change. Just as she finally feels grounded, one of her close friendships blossoms into love, unexpected, tender, and transforming. But then fate tries her again, and adventure calls once more. Torn between love and the longing to see what’s over the next hill, she must make a choice that will determine her next course.
Book Three: Roam and Return
The primary focus of this book is a solo journey, a year-long passage across South and North America filled with adventure, challenge, and profound self-discovery. Alena navigates a new long-distance relationship, lets go of old friendships, and steps toward a life shaped by love, resilience, and conscious choice. It’s a story about courage, curiosity, and learning to trust oneself when the path is uncertain.
Roam and Return begins with Alena traveling through Russia and Belarus with the Japanese friends she first met in Malaysia. They explore Siberia, where her parents were born and raised, and continue into Belarus, her homeland. From these roots, a year of travel unfolds, across continents, into landscapes of both external wonder and internal reflection.
As she departs for South America, a new chapter quietly begins: a long-distance relationship amidst her journeys. She steps into the unknown, unsure of what the relationship will become, or what she will discover about herself, while preparing to travel farther and more independently than ever before.
Her partner joins her briefly in Brazil and Argentina at the outset of her South American adventure. After their reunion, they part ways again, navigating distance, communication, and differing travel approaches. Both committed, both hopeful, they slowly learn, between them, what works and what doesn’t.
Throughout South America, Alena travels mostly by land, crossing vast stretches of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico by bus. Each day tests her courage. She is robbed in Bolivia and faces fear in unfamiliar cities. Yet she also moves through staggering beauty, glaciers, mountains, salt flats, Machu Picchu, Chichén Itzá, moments that take her breath away, and remind her why she dares to venture.
In North America, she road-trips across the United States, exploring national parks, the Grand Canyon, and red rock deserts. A near-accident, stopped by road police, forces her to confront responsibility, vulnerability, and the thin line between adventure and danger.
Through it all, the relationship bends, stretches, and endures. Love becomes both an anchor and a question, carried with her through every border and silent night bus ride.
As the journey nears its close, Alena faces a choice about what comes next. For the relationship to grow, she must return to Malaysia. Unlike her partner, she is untethered, free to move. She chooses to step toward him, toward possibility, and toward the next version of herself , aware that travel has not just shaped the world she sees, but the person she is becoming.
The Trilogy’s Progression: From Motion to Meaning
Together, the three books form a complete arc: from chasing the world to embracing it, from seeking adventure to understanding where the heart truly belongs.
Book 1: The Restless Search – To know the world and the self by means of movement.
The trilogy kicks off in motion, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Every country pushes her to grow and change, comforts stripped away to reveal her true self. It is through fierce independence and struggle that she learns that travel is not just about seeing the world, but about seeing herself clearly when everything familiar has fallen away.
Book 2: The Grounding – Learning to Pause, to Love, and to Find Stillness Within Motion
After years of movement, she learns to stand still. Teaching, meditation, and love teach her the quiet power of being present. Growth, she discovers, is not always about the distance traveled but sometimes is found in stillness, in connection, and in the courage to call a fleeting moment “home.”
Book 3: The Integration – When Love and Freedom Learn to Coexist
Setting out again, she travels across the Americas not to escape but to understand. Faced with solitude and the uncertainties of love, she learns that returning does not mean giving up freedom; it means consciously choosing it, carrying the road within, knowing she belongs wherever she is.
Threading Through All Three Books
- The courage to leave, the humility to learn, and the grace to return.
- Travel as both an outer adventure and an inner pilgrimage.
- The evolving definition of home — from a destination to a state of being.
- Resilience through uncertainty — the art of trusting life when plans fall apart.
- The quiet bravery of beginning again, time after time.
- Human connection – to people, cultures, and oneself, as the truest reward of wandering.
- The importance of making it count, seizing opportunities, and embracing every chance to explore and evolve.
Each book builds upon the last, revealing how self-discovery, cultural immersion, and connection intertwine to create a life lived with purpose and authenticity.
The Journey Comes Full Circle
Alena Zhdanava’s trilogy is not a simple record of places visited; it is an emotional atlas of transformation. Her journey reflects a universal human truth: every voyage, no matter how far it takes us, is always a return to the self.
Hers is a story that spans continents and years, reminding readers that belonging isn’t found; it’s made through curiosity, compassion, and courage.
Three books, one journey: one life transformed by movement, meaning, and the unwavering decision to follow the compass of the heart.
